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Today we’re getting back to the roots of this blog. Dungeons and Dragons. Specifically the gluey, messy, break-the-bank and bash-the-kit kind of Dungeons and Dragons. First up: The Ice Golem Army. This requires acrylic fish rocks, superglue, lightweight insulation foam, and some acrylic paint.

The rocks can be found at a craft store, online at Amazon, or in your child’s goldfish bowl. The glue and insulation were, naturally, stolen from the neighbor’s garage.

This one’s kind of a no-brainer. Affix smaller rocks to larger rocks to recreate Gorignak. Try different variations of rock golem. Warning: don’t use epoxy as the glue, as I’ve recommended in the past on this very blog. I’ve discovered through trial and error that most epoxies yellow over time, turning your kickass Ice Golem into a Yellow Snow Golem.

I also realized I would need a boss to head up my pack of frozen friendos. So I made a big ol’ fat daddy golem. You can be pretty careless with the shape of the feet, since we’ll be sinking those into the foam, thus hiding most of the bottoms of the foot rocks.

Since these bastards come out to be less than 5 cents apiece, I decided to error on the site of “Way, way too many. Unstoppable waves, too many.”

The one mistake I’ll admit to (for this project) is gluing them onto the bases before painting around the feet. If possible, paint the feet first, otherwise you’ll catch glimpses of pink foam in the clear refracting rocks. For this reason I had to paint higher with my initial blue paint, followed by some white sponge painting.

Next, I was inspired by the art of Fate Stay Night: Infinite Bladeworks. Specifically I thought it would be neat to play a fighter who could, on the fly, swap between a landscape of discarded weapons at his feet.

Google Images / Fate Stay Night

To accomplish this I cracked open my craft box, which is brimming with unused weapon variants from model kits I’ve worked on over the years. I wanted my fighter to be a Great Weapon Master, so I focused on the Warhammer brand weapon models, which tend to be a bit more hefty, or comically large, depending on the model. I also wanted a gladiator barbarian body with a vicious fighter helmet. So some kit-bashing was necessary.

And yes. I made fun little screaming sounds as I beheaded the miniatures with a pair of wire cutters.

The sockets were cut with an exacto blade and rare earth magnets (extra small, $1.99 from the game store) were super-glued into the plastic. I also wanted a crossbow. Because some enemies aren’t kind enough to remain in crowbar range.

Next, for the base, I scratched up the plastic to give it some tooth and applied a mound of plumber’s putty. I wanted a slight incline to the bank, that way I could affix jagged bits of metal around the fighter’s feet. Both to enhance the “Rough” feel of the mini, and to magnet the “usable” weapons to the base.

The usable weapons are grey for now, but we’ll put some red and brass paint on them to make them stand out later.

I went with a parchment yellow base to give the bleed-through a sepia tone. I wanted the paint job to feel Silent Hill adjacent. Second cousin to Pyramid Head, maybe.

Pictured above is the figure before the final few dry brushes and black acrylic wash (20% paint, 80% water).

And here’s the final product…

It’s always about the accessories, isn’t it?

We’ll catch you next week with an update on our old Westworld theory article. See you then.